


What the eyes don't see

by hybridshade (shimyaku)



Series: Beyond Sight Itself - Conjurer'verse [1]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Challenge Response, Community: run_the_con, Developing Relationship, Gen, Hurt Neal, Hurt/Comfort, Magical Realism, Mystery Character(s), Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 09:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shimyaku/pseuds/hybridshade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter finds Neal in a precarious situation. A situation he doesn't quite understand.</p><p><b>A/N:</b> Written for <span class="ljuser i-ljuser"><a href="http://frostfalcon.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://frostfalcon.livejournal.com/"><b>frostfalcon</b></a></span>s prompt ‘for whom the bell tolls’ over at comm <span class="ljuser i-ljuser"></span><a href="http://run-the-con.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://run-the-con.livejournal.com/"></a><b>run_the_con</b>. This turned out to be a tricky prompt! I got down what I could, but there's still much more to say in this 'verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What the eyes don't see

 

They don't find Neal until the fifth day.

It's in the basement of an abandoned office building, there's no locks on the doors, and Peter walks (almost accidentally) into the stark white room to find him there on the ground – still as a statue, kneeling. He's still wearing the same suit he disappeared in, though the jacket and tie are laid neatly at his side and his shirt is untucked and partly unbuttoned, all of it looking a little worse for wear. Peter nearly runs to him, but Diana grabs his arm first and holds him back.

"He's in a stasis, Peter. Best not to touch him 'til we know what's up."

A stasis. A state some mentally-centred Cons could slip into to preserve body and mind. Peter felt a stone suddenly land in his gut – Neal in a stasis most likely meant that he was hurt, and that in itself just wasn't acceptable. Peter was more than grateful that White Collar crimes didn't usually have to deal with this sort of thing; in fact it was why he'd gravitated toward it in the first place. Cons had only really started to become active and accepted in society over the last few decades, and since he'd been raised without any real contact with them, Peter had actively avoided any attempts by superiors to be roped into the organised crime and counter-intelligence divisions which were faced with 'the unexplained' on a regular basis.

Neal had been the first one he'd ever pursued, though he hadn't figured it out straight away – Neal's methods had seemingly been far too 'human'. Peter had tried to read up on things back when Neal had initially come into his custody, but the tracking anklet has some sort of power-dampening facility, meaning Peter never really has to worry about it anyway.

Except for those times like the present, where he has to rely on Diana and Jones to stop him doing anything ignorant and making the situation worse. He switches constantly from one foot to the other as they wait for a specialised paramedic to get there to check Neal's condition, and once the woman is satisfied that it's safe she places two fingers against his temple and concentrates. Peter makes it to the count of ten before the woman finally pulls back and Neal's eyes blink open wearily, taking a moment to focus as they reabsorb his surroundings.

"Mr Caffrey?"

Neal's gaze snaps back to the woman, as does Peter's. He's been holding out hope that Neal would be alright, but the more moments that pass, the more he can see Neal's awareness returning to himself and the more he observes his growing discomfort.

"How long since you went into stasis, Mr Caffrey?"

"Three days, eight hours and forty-eight minutes."

The woman sighs.

"Okay. Don't you go trying to move, now. We'll get a stretcher down here. There's nothing broken but you may have a couple of cracked ribs and there's definitely some bruising."

Neal's lips twitch with a half-smile.

"The physical injuries aren't what I'm worried about."

The medic hurries off without another word and Peter and Diana approach him warily.

"You okay, Caffrey?"

Peter's glad for Diana's apparent calm. He himself has no idea what to say.

"For the moment," he says, breathing shallowly, "But only because I'm just back on the surface. Everything else will catch up soon, so we gotta talk while I can."

"Starting with what happened with Walsh, if you don't mind," Peter finally gets his voice to cooperate.

"Peter, Walsh… isn't who you think he is."

"You mean he's—"

"I mean the face we've been attributing to Walsh is just another of his cronies."

"So who's Walsh, then? Have we seen him before? Is he familiar?"

Something like amusement passes over Neal's face. "I'd say not. For the most part… he has no appearance."

"He has no… Wait, what?"

"Walsh is intangible, Peter. For all intents and purposes he doesn't exist."

 

~

 

_Peter stared across the bench. He almost wanted to hit the guy – no one deserved to look that good in an orange jumpsuit._

_"So, my best guess is x-ray vision. That's all I could figure."_

_He's seen Neal's work caught on security cameras, and he would stare at empty sections of wall or closed doors for far longer than should be normal. So he had to be seeing something, right? Neal had asked him to guess since he wasn't going to tell, but if he was wrong… well, Neal would remain a bit of a mystery either way._

_"X-ray vision, Peter?" Neal scoffed. "Calling what I do 'x-ray vision' is like comparing a stick figure to the Mona Lisa. What I 'see' is so far beyond what's behind a door or a wall."_

_"So enlighten me."_

 

~

 

Peter sits by Neal's bedside, itching to wrap his hand around the pale, lifeless-looking one sitting atop the sheets. Neal had warned him once not to touch him if he was ever asleep or unconscious, but Peter was finding it impossibly hard to restrain himself all the same.

Once the paramedics had returned and started to move Neal he'd almost immediately begun drifting. He'd croaked out something about using a blacklight before he'd passed out completely, and Diana had once more held him back, telling Jones to go with Caffrey in the ambulance instead. He hadn't known what was going on until he'd had a UV torch dumped in his hands and someone had turned out the lights overhead, immersing them in darkness.

He and Diana had lit their torches immediately and gasped at the walls surrounding them, absolutely covered in strange markings that stood in stark contrast to the white walls they were painted on – yet were completely invisible under normal light.

"No wonder," Diana muttered under her breath.

"You're gonna have to spell it out for me," Peter had confessed, "I know these have to do with Conjurers but that's as far as my knowledge runs."

"Well, I'm a little rusty, but from what I can tell they're basically just keeping Neal imprisoned. Anyone else could have come in and out, but these are noting Neal's abilities specifically and there's no way he would've been able to leave without help."

Officers had cleared the scene and there'd been nothing else for them to find, so Peter had picked Neal's jacket and tie up from the floor and headed straight to the hospital, where he'd remained. They had nothing else to go on until Neal was awake again and could give more information, but Jones was already looking into registered incorporeal Cons and that was the best they could do for the moment.

Peter soon finds himself leaning over the side of Neal's bed, resting his elbows on the mattress, and before he knows it he's drifting off, the alluring call of sleep pulling him under.

 

~

 

_He's staring at white walls. White walls slathered in fluorescent markings, the colours so bright they almost hurt his eyes._

_He knows what they mean without having to study them – their power is oppressive and he can feel the intention just as well in his bones. No need to waste his efforts reading them._

_The blonde man – the man they'd thought was Walsh – moves into his line of sight and smiles. He (or is it Walsh?) wants to know something that he knows, but he's not exactly sure if he even knows what that is. Which means he's going to be tortured for information he may not be able to give._

_There are fists and there are boots, but they mean little. Nothing means anything until the real Walsh arrives, blondie bowing out with a deferential salute. At first he's not sure what the man was saluting_ to _, but then his mind begins to adjust, and he begins to see._

_What he sees looks like a cloud of dust, swirling about in controlled formations. His eyes follow it as it dances through the air, light on its feet, not a care in the world._

_There's the tinkling of bells and the hum of melodic laughter._

_"So you can see me… My, what a treasure you are."_

_The chinking and chiming inches closer as the dust moves with it, circling about his head and creating a slight breeze._

_"You must tell me all you've seen. To see the world the way you do… Ah, you should be unstoppable! Yet why you submit to these mere men…"_

_The cloud thickens like a storm, and he sees the flash of an olive-skinned man as if it were a strike of lightning, the image burning into the back of his retinas. The cloud quickly swallows him, chokes on him, and a consciousness other than his own worms its way into his skull. The whisper-like tinkling has become more akin to the pounding of a timpani drum. And the pain is unbearable._

 

~

 

Peter leaps awake with a scream caught in his throat. His head is in complete disarray and the endless ringing hasn't abated, and he falls to his knees pushing his hands over his ears.

It's only once the room starts suddenly filling with people that he realises he's still in the hospital, still at Neal's bedside, and the monitors beside him are trilling with alarms.

He'd fallen asleep on top of Neal's arm.

Someone pulls him from the room and all but shoves him into a chair. It's blessedly quiet but the residual ringing is still there, an ongoing echo. This someone – a nurse – asks if he's alright, but he doesn't answer. Since he's not really sure.

~

 

_"I see what isn't there, Peter."_

_Peter bites his lip in confusion. "So you see things that are invisible?"_

_"Not just that," he smirks like he's been holding onto the world's greatest secret, "I see was_ has _been, sometimes what_ will _be, and anything that exists but isn't visible. Like blood that's been washed away, or a wall that's been knocked down—"_

"Or the internal locking mechanism of a safe as you play around with the dial."

Neal grins. "Now you're catching on."

 

~

 

Peter looks over at Neal. He's still tucked into his hospital bed, his eyes are still sunken and bruised, but he's awake and that's what matters.

He squeezes the fingers entwined with his own.

"I'm sorry you saw all that."

"I'm not."

Neal looks up at that.

"It was frightening, sure," Peter admits, "And I intend to never be directly privy to your thoughts or experiences ever again, but it was an eye opener, no pun intended."

"What happens now?"

"We've turned it over to the Enigmatics Division. Let the professionals handle it. They wanted to pinch you, y'know? Once they heard what you can do."

"Yeah, well," Neal shrugs, "I'm quite happy where I am, thanks. Less excitement, or something."

Peter gives a sly grin. "Or something is right."

~


End file.
